Avanti provides low-income high-school students a world-class science and mathematics education in India. It has a radical approach to teaching: with no trained teachers and very little conventional lecturing and yet students perform at par with some of the most expensive after-school programs in India. Avanti runs stand-alone centers in Mumbai, Delhi and Kanpur and in-school centers at the Chennai Corporation Schools-where the focus is on teaching students how to learn from books and their peers Prior to his work at Avanti, Akshay served on the founding team of HeartFlow a venture-backed medical diagnostics company. For his work at Avanti, he was awarded the Draper Richards Kaplan Fellowship and Echoing Green Fellowship in 2012. In this interview Akshay, discusses:

• Avanti’s approach to collaborative learning
• Why collaborative learning works so well
• How Avanti’s approach to innovation was driven by necessity
• What keeps Akshay motivated
• The importance of setting boundaries
• Avanti’s goal to teach a million children